I have some newbie mining questions.
I started with cryptos about a month or so ago, and tried some cloud mining recently (my PC is way too wimpy to mine with) and tried the Azure trial/CPU mining with darkcoin. The last couple of days it's slowed down, a lot... and I see in the lottery pool a block hasn't been found in a long time now.
Anyway, is this because of the GPU miner? Has it basically destroyed CPU mining on this coin completely? Or is the lottery pool messed up?
Well if the pool is not finding blocks, how are you going to get paid? It's simple really.
The hashrate has gone up since 20-25 days ago due to
a) cpu miner 1.20c
b) increased interest miners
c) many azure instances going online
d) cpu miner 1.30
e) increased interest more miners more cpu farms
f) development of sgminer for GPUs
g) spike of interest due to coinmarketcap.com listing that made quite a few people aware of what's going on over here
h) arrival of significant GPU hashpower (and some CPU power) after (g)
(in that order).
The payouts are normally much reduced for everyone involved which means that people will appreciate more what 1 DRK actually means since it is mined with difficulty.
Difficulty in producing the coin = you value it more = you hesitate to dump it for cheap = prices soar.
CPUs are still in the game, although GPUs now represent a large percentage of the net's hashrate.